Like Johann
Strauss, Emile Waldteufel came from a family of dance musicians, being preceded
in the business by his father Louis (1801-84) and brother Leon (1832-84). Despite their Germanic surname, the family
were French. This is explained by their German ancestry and the fact that they
hailed from Alsace, which despite strong German traditions
had been fully integrated into France since 1793.

Emile Waldteufel
was born in Strasbourg on 9th December 1837, just seven weeks after the eider
Johann Strauss gave his first concert on French soil in that very city. When he
was seven the family moved to Paris for his brother Leon to take up a place as
a violin student at the Paris Conservatoire. Emile Waldteufel was to live in Paris for the rest of his life, and he in turn studied
piano at the Conservatoire from 1853 to 1857, his classmates there including
Jules Massenet.

Meanwhile the
family dance orchestra was becoming one of the best-known in Paris, increasingly in demand for Society balls during
Napoleon III's Second Empire. In 1865 Emile was appointed court pianist
to the Empress Eugenie in succession to Joseph Ascher (composer of ' Alice, where art thou?'), performing at Court functions not
only in Paris but in Biarritz and Compiegne. From 1867 the Waldteufel orchestra played
at Napoleon III's magnificent Court balls at the Tulleries.

After the
Franco-Prussian War the orchestra again presided at the Presidential balls at
the Elysee. Yet so far Emile Waldteufel's dances had been known only to a
relatively limited Society audience. By the time international fame came he was
almost forty. In October 1874 he happened to be playing at a soiree attended by
the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII. The Prince complimented him on his
waltz Manolo and agreed to help launch his music in London.

The result was a
long-term publishing contract with the London
firm of Hopwood & Crew. Since the firm was half-owned by Charles Coote,
director of Coote & Tinney's Band, the premier London
dance orchestra, this also gave access to the musical programmes of Queen Victoria’s State Bans at BuckinghamPalace. For several years Emile Waldteufel's
music dominated the programmes there, generating him world-wide fame as he
turned out a string of works that enjoyed huge popularity -including his
best-known work Les Patineurs (The Skaters) in 1882.

His French publisher
Durand, Schoenewerk was now forced to buy the French rights to these works from
Hopwood & Crew. So later did the German firm of Litolff, in whose editions
the works sometimes appeared under slightly different German names. In
addition, to suit Germanic custom, in 1883 Litolff retrospectively began an
opus numbering system. This began at 101 to make arbitrary allowance for early
works, and for various reasons many works were numbered out of chronological
sequence, thereby providing a source of much confusion ever since.

Waldteufel
appeared in London in 1885 and Berlin
in 1889, and in 1890 and 1891 he conducted at the Paris Opera Bans. His
orchestra continued to provide dance music for Presidential Bans, as well as
for other Society functions, until 1899, when he retired. He continued to
compose, but his style was by then outdated. He died in Paris on 12th February 1915 at the age of 77. His wife, a
former singer Celestine Dufau, whom he married in 1873 and who bore him two
sons and a daughter, had died the previous year.

Waldteufel was
recognised as a good-natured person, with a ready sense of humour-
characteristics that are readily perceivable in his music. Unlike the music of
Johann Strauss, Waldteufel's perhaps scales no great architectural heights, but
rather seeks to enchant by the grace and charm of his melodies and their gentle
harmonies. By comparison with Strauss's very masculine creations, there is
undoubtedly more of a feminine feel about Waldteufel's waltzes. Unlike Strauss,
he conducted with a baton rather than a violin bow, and he composed at the
piano, his works being orchestrated later. The standard Waldteufel orchestration
was for strings, double woodwind, two cornets, four horns, three trombones and ophicleide
(or tuba), plus timpani and percussion.

After Waldteufel's
death his music continued to hold a place in the affections of ordinary
music-lovers alongside that of Johann Strauss. The conductor of these
recordings, Alfred Walter, recalls having a lot of Waldteufel's music at his
childhood home in Southern
Bohemia -not only for piano
but also in arrangements for piano trio which were played in his musical family.
If in recent decades Emile Waldteufel's music has been overshadowed by that of
the Strausses, it is with correspondingly greater freshness that we are able to
rediscover its grace and charm today.

Unfortunately Paris newspapers did not report the titles of dances played
at Society balls. Thus the best available dating of Emile Waldteufel's works
comes from publication records and dates of registration with the French
copyright collecting agency S.A.C.E.M. In the following notes, the original
French titles are given, together with English translations and the titles
under which the works were published in Germany.

It was on 1st
March 1875 that a contract was signed between Emile Waldteufel in Paris, and Charles Coote and Edward Chappell in London. This provided for the London
publisher Hopwood & Crew to acquire a minimum of four waltzes and one other
composition each year for a period of eight years, with an option to break
every two years. The first year's batch of four waltzes comprised Taut a vaus,
Flats de jaie, Entre nous and Bien aimes, the first three of which
were included in the programme for the first State Ball of the 1876 season at BuckinghamPalace. There, positioned at one end of the
oblong ballroom, Coote & Tinney’s orchestra began the popularisation of
Emile Waldteufel's music that was to spread to such remarkable proportions
within only a year or two. As with other waltzes of the time, the introduction
of this waltz - in polonaise tempo - is more elaborate than was Waldteufel's
later custom. The published edition bears a dedication to Baroness Erlanger.

On 30th November
1881 the contract with Hopwood & Crew was renewed until31st December 1888,
this time on the basis of six waltzes and two polkas per annum. Among the
pieces that emerged towards the end of the renewed contract was the lively Chiiteau
en Espagne polka, which aptly captures the spirit of the attainable dreams
and aspirations of the title.

Gaite, Valse
(Gaiety, Waltz / Frohsinns-walzer), Op.164 (1878)

Dating from the
period of Emile Waldteufel’s greatest successes, the waltz Gaite was
never quite the success of some of its immediate contemporaries. Its
attractions now are all the greater for its lack of familiarity. The slow
introduction, full of pauses and variations of tempo, scarcely suggests the
gaiety of the title, which comes through only when the waltz proper starts. The
leggiero second theme of the third waltz section is curiously
anticipatory of the second theme of Les Patineurs of some four years
later. Like the almost exactly contemporary waltz Hommage aux dames, this
bears a dedication to Mme de Girardin, possibly the second wife of Emile de
Girardin (1806- 81), founder of La Presse.

Tout a vous
(Yours Very Truly / Dir allein), Valse, Op.142 (1875)

Of the works that
resulted from Emile Waldteufe1's exclusive contract with Hopwood & Crew, Tout
a vous was by a long way the first to appear. It was published on 25th May
1875, and first performed by Coote & Tinney's Band at the State Ballon 3rd
June that year. The introductory cornet solo is one of the composition's most
noteworthy features, but there is a fine sweep about the whole piece. The amabile
second part of the second waltz section, with its busy accompaniment, is
especially enchanting. The published edition carries a dedication to Mademoiselle
Marie de Montalvo.

Bella,
Polka-mazurka, Op. 113 (1867)

Before Emile
Waldteufel entered into his contract with Hopwood & Crew, the family
customarily published their works themselves. Such was the case with the
delicate little Bella polka-mazurka, with its enchanting air of
hesitancy. It appeared in 1867, the year of Napoleon III's great Exposition Universelle
and the year in which the Waldteufel family orchestra first played at the
Imperial Balls. One can well imagine the piece being played to warm approval at
those Tuileries balls. The published edition bears a dedication to Monsieur
Theodore Thurneyssen.

Having secured an
exclusive contract with Emile Waldteufel, the publisher Hopwood & Crew
curiously chose to sell some works on to other London
publishers. Thus the waltz Brune ou blonde was published in London by the firm of Enoch and Sons. They got a good
bargain, for this is a delightful waltz, right from its will-o'-the-wisp
opening theme, which leads into an anticipation of the waltz's magnificently
invigorating main theme. The second part of the second waltz section, with its
engaging instrumental interplay, is particularly captivating. The waltz was
dedicated to Madame Louis Cartier.

Acclamations
(Hoch lebe der Tanz!), Valse, Op. 223 (1888)

The Waldteufel
waltzes of the 1880s generally failed to sustain the same high level of
invention of the works of the late-1870s. However, this was certainly not the
case with the waltz Acclamations. Known in German as Hoch lebe der
Tanz! (Long Live the Dance!), this is truly one of the finest Waldteufel
waltzes. The principal theme is of interest in that it repeats the four-note
rhythmic pattern also to be found in the waltzes Les Sirenes and Les Patineurs.
Where this waltz particularly appeals is in a couple of striking themes
that lift the heart at just the point where, in lesser waltzes, the attention
may be beginning to flag. In the second part of the second waltz section the
sly, seductive break in rhythm in the third bar is especially effective. In the
following waltz section the insistent repeated notes, again in the third bar,
achieve a particularly beguiling effect, which is heightened by the moto perpetuo
quaver figure that leads into the repeat of the theme.

La BarcarolIe,
Valse, Op.178 (1882)

Another lovely
waltz that has never fully received its due is La BarcaroIle. Its
graceful main theme, played on cornet over a figure depicting gently lapping
water, is merely the prelude to a sequence of contrasted melodies of which the con
fuoco first theme of the third waltz section is especially arresting. The
pub1ished edition carries a dedication to Baroness Preecha Kon-la-Karn, quoting
also her maiden name as the rather less exotic Fanny Knox.

BeobiIe,
Pizzicato (1908?)

Not only is the
pizzicato Beobile totally atypical of Emile Waldteufel's normal output,
but its origins are obscure. It has survived in the music 1ibrary of the
British Broadcasting Corporation in London, in the form
of a manuscript from which the work received several BBC broadcasts over the
years before first being recorded commercially. The significance of the title
is a puzzle, and no such title is to be found in the otherwise comprehensive list
of Emile Waldteufel's published and unpub1ished compositions registered with
S.A.C.E.M. What is to be found there is a work Babiole (Trif1e),
described as 'pizzicati' and apparently pub1ished by Fonotipia of Milan in
1908. The coincidence of two works in the same pizzicato style having
titles which, when handwritten, could readi1y be mistaken for one another
raises the question of whether the two might be one and the same. Unfortunately
no copy of Babiole is known to exist to enable us to resolve the matter
one way or another. We are left with this charming piece p1ayed on plucked
strings -a trif1e certainly, but a most diverting one.